Greeted By Butterflies

Returning home from the big blogger meetup in Chicago we found the weather had gone from pleasant spring to scorching hot summer. The human garden dwellers may find it unpleasant to work in these conditions, but the flying flowers thrive in the heat. The Great Spangled Fritillary butterflies were out and about among the Asclepias tuberosa, pronounced (ass-KLE-pee-us)(too-ber-OH-suh). All of the butterfly weeds growing here were started from seed. It takes several years to get a nice clump and most of the larger ones are orange. This yellow, blooming for the first time this year is a nice surprise from a packaged mixture.Sitting in a chair, waiting for these captivating creatures to land and be still is a hard task, but someone has got to do it. We normally like to take photos as the sun has moved across the sky to let the multi trunked silver maple provide shade from the blaring sun, but the butterflies prefer that bright light to dine so full sun illuminated these shots.Nature shows its brilliance by the timing of the hatching of these masterpieces, the Great Spangleds with the opening of the buds of their most favored nectar source, the Asclepias. A grand pairing if ever there was one.It was too difficult to choose between these shots in order to keep the post to a smaller size for ease of reading, something suggested during the blogger talk at the Spring Fling in Chicago. The effort was made, really it was.From these close ups, it might appear that the whole garden is ablaze with color. But as Saxon Holt says, the camera lies.In full disclosure, here is the long shot of the area featured in the butterfly shots. There are various things in bloom right now, but there is also a predominant sea of green from foliage. The Asclepias is at the top of the steps across the gravel path. See the little orange dots? On a final note, as difficult as it is to get a focused shot of butterflies in the garden, patiently waiting with camera at the ready, taking a photo of Rice Paper butterflies while they are sipping salty snacks from one’s right arm while holding the camera and snapping the shutter with the left hand is even more of a challenge. (Taken at the Lincoln Park butterfly house in Chicago).
Frances